Established in 1962, the MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.

Scholars from a range of disciplines offer an expansive vision of the intersections between new information technologies and the humanities.

Between Humanities and the Digital offers an expansive vision of how the humanities engage with digital and information technology, providing a range of perspectives on a quickly evolving, contested, and exciting field. It documents the multiplicity of ways that humanities scholars have turned increasingly to digital and information technology as both a scholarly tool and a cultural object in need of analysis.

The contributors explore the state of the art in digital humanities from varied disciplinary perspectives, offer a sample of digitally inflected work that ranges from an analysis of computational literature to the collaborative development of a “Global Middle Ages” humanities platform, and examine new models for knowledge production and infrastructure. Their contributions show not only that the digital has prompted the humanities to move beyond traditional scholarly horizons, but also that the humanities have pushed the digital to become more than a narrowly technical application.

How traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites.

Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of “institution” as a “mobilizing network”—emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change—and explore the implications for higher education. The Future of Thinking reports on innovative, virtual institutions. It also uses the idea of a virtual institution both as part of its subject matter and as part of its process: the first draft of the book was hosted on a Web site for collaborative feedback and writing. The authors use this experiment in participatory writing as a test case for virtual institutions, learning institutions, and a new form of collaborative authorship. The finished version is still posted and open for comment. This book is the full-length report of the project, which was summarized in an earlier MacArthur volume, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.

In this report, Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for today's graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions. This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning